


Lucky

by APgeeksout



Category: Chew
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 10:51:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/609027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/pseuds/APgeeksout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>MEET MONICA CRUZ.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lucky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fivefootnothing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fivefootnothing/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, fivefootnothing! I've only just been turned on to this fantastically weird series, so it's entirely possible that I'm biffing the canon somehow, apologies if that's the case!

“Real sorry about the mess, Miz Cruz. Nobody knew you'd lost juice until the Washingtons' ceiling started leaking.”

MEET MONICA CRUZ.

She's always thought of herself as pretty lucky.

Here's why:

Monica is a cibopath.

She can try a tomato, and absorb from its flesh the sunshine that nurtured it, the ladybugs' feet that tickled it on the vine, and the satisfaction of the man who turned the seeds in the dark soil of a patch of earth he can call his own.

Of course, she can try a steak fajita and absorb a whole other kind of history. Still, she's mostly regarded her ability as a stroke of strange good fortune.

Today, her luck seems to have run out.

Monica could always feel her abuela's strength and determination in her empanadas, her father's jovial good nature in his tamales. She was practically an adult before she understood that “Love is the secret ingredient!” was only a platitude for most people.

She knows she's not the only one – for a while, there was an active community of cibopaths on the internet – but she still thinks she's one of the most fortunate: A woman in Osaka hates the taste of vinegar, but only gets sensations from foods that've been pickled. Some poor guy in Pennsylvania eats beets for 2 or more meals a day, overwhelmed by the impressions he gets from any other food.

The soul in Torino who doesn't get any reading from pork products _might_ have her beat, but Monica knows that in comparison to all those people who only get flavor and nutrients from their meals, she's lucky, lucky, lucky.

From the first supper Valerie cooked for her – chiles rellenos, black beans, dirty rice – Monica knew that she was exactly as wonderful as she seemed. Spontaneous. Raucous. Affectionate. Loyal. And she could tell from her first bite of cornbread that Valerie valued the qualities she'd somehow ascertained in Monica even without benefit of cibopathy.

Valerie loved her – or could grow to; It was right there in the food!

In every plateful, for years. For all of Valerie's life.

When the doctors said “inoperable”, when Valerie decided against the fourth course of drugs, she retreated to the kitchen. Valerie made batch after batch after batch of lasagnas, cookies, enchiladas, casseroles, cupcakes, meatloaves. They filled a brand new chest freezer with love notes and went on living for as long as Valerie could stay with her.

Losing Valerie is the worst and hardest thing that has ever happened to her, but even in her grief, Monica knows that she is lucky. She got to have a life with Valerie. And all she has to do to feel her close again is reheat and take a bite.

Except that today, her luck has run out, because Monica has come home from her first vacation without Valerie in 23 years to discover that, during her absence, a fuse has blown in her apartment. And every bit of Valerie's legacy to her has thawed and spoiled inside the deep-freezer.

After today, Monica will consider herself lucky if she can find a foodstuff that tastes only of itself and not of her loss.


End file.
